Oscar-winning director Spike Lee has been named jury president for the 73rd annual Cannes Film Festival. The festival will be taking place on May 12-23, 2020. Lee will not only be the first African-American to serve as jury president for the festival, but also the first person from the African diaspora. Lee has had seven films that have premiered at Cannes over the years, including “Do the Right Thing,” “Jungle Fever” “Summer of Sam,” and “BlacKkKlansman.”
“To me the Cannes Film Festival (besides being the most important film festival in the world — no disrespect to anybody) has had a great impact on my film career. You could easily say Cannes changed the trajectory of who I became in world cinema,” Lee said via official announcement earlier this morning. “It started way back in 1986 — my first feature film ‘She’s Gotta Have It,’ which won the Prix de la Jeunesse in the Directors’ Fortnight. The next joint was in 1989 — “Do the Right Thing,” an Official Selection in Competition. And I don’t have the time nor space to write about the cinematic explosion that jumped off, still relative to this, 30 years later,” Lee said.
Whether his upcoming film, the Netflix-produced “Da 5 Bloods,” will premiere at Cannes this year is up for debate. We do know shooting on the WWII film has wrapped and that post-production is all but done as well, however, the Netflix ban at Cannes may very well still continue this year, which means Lee’s latest joint may have to wait for the fall festivals. Regardless, I don’t think “Da 5 Bloods” would even premiere in the competition since it would represent a conflict of interest with Lee as Jury president.
The official selection for Cannes 2020 and the rest of the jury will be announced later this year, most likely in April.
Despite starring in three ‘Chronicles of Narnia’ movies, Liam Neeson, apparently, does not read the trades, nor does he seem to be online much, which might explain why he’s unaware of Greta Gerwig’s version.